


I Like This World (Better With You In It)

by PrioritiesSorted



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, In the Flesh (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, M/M, PDS!Lily, PDS!Remus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-30
Updated: 2014-09-30
Packaged: 2018-02-19 09:08:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2382818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrioritiesSorted/pseuds/PrioritiesSorted
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He should have known it was coming, really. When his parents smuggled him through the back door in the dead of night, it had been fairly clear that Remus was no longer welcome in Godric’s Hollow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Like This World (Better With You In It)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [theyshotmyclown](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theyshotmyclown/gifts).



> Thought I would post Scarlett's birthday fic on here in case it's not just us who constantly thinks about Harry Potter/ITF crossovers.

He should have known it was coming, really. When his parents smuggled him through the back door in the dead of night, it had been fairly clear that Remus was no longer welcome in Godric’s Hollow. He hadn’t realised he’d been waiting for it until the knocking (or rather, banging) started up from the front door the third night he was home.

Remus clutched his knees to his chest in the furthest corner of his room while his parents stood silently in the darkened hallway, weapons raised, holding their breath, and waiting. After what seemed like an eternity, the noise ceased, and Remus let out a long, shuddering breath. He padded down the stairs on silent feet, still expecting to turn into the hall and find a gun pointed to his head.

Instead, he was knocked to the floor, his body hitting the carpet in a way that should have been painful, bowled over by a tangle of elbows and knees and messy black hair and a clamour of voices he had thought he’d never hear again.

“I bloody  _told_ you so. I said he was back! Didn’t I say?”

“Fucking hell, mate, what took you so long?”

“We  _missed_ you Remus.”

“You really shouldn’t leave the back door key under the mat like that, mate. Any old riff-raff could get in.”

Remus didn’t say anything. Lying on his back on the middle of the hallway, his friends piled on top of him, beaming at him and talking to him and touching him like nothing had ever happened, like he wasn’t a monster. Sobbing without tears felt strange.

**

The sound of the television wafted through the house as Lyall stood over the sink full of dishes, up to his elbows in soapy water. Once, he’d have complained at having James, Sirius, and Peter over for supper three nights in a row, but he was so glad of the clamour after years of near silence in the Lupin house, he couldn’t bring himself to begrudge the number of dirty plates and cups accumulating at a rapid pace.

“In the studio this evening we’ll be talking to Victus leader Tom Riddle, who continues to be outspoken in his rejection of the government’s PDS reintegration initiative…”

Lyall smiled as four voices cried out in perfect unison:

“Wanker!”

**

They didn’t talk about the accident. Generally, they tried to pretend that none of it ever happened; that Remus and Lily had never gone to see  _King Lear_ on an icy Friday night; that James hadn’t screamed himself hoarse, Sirius hadn’t been stonily silent, Peter’s eyes hadn’t been wet for a whole month; they pretended that no-one woke up sweating in the night, hands groping for weapons they had put away months ago.

It got harder to pretend once Lily came home.

“It wasn’t your fault, Remus. The brakes were shot; there was nothing you could have done.”

“I could have turned the wheel the other way, I could’ve realised sooner-“

“Remus. Look at me. It. Was. Not. Your. Fault.”

**

The Lupin house was quiet for the first time in almost a week. Peter had gone with his parents to pick up his gran from the treatment centre, and James had gone in search of Lily, (“Death cannot stop true love; all it can do is delay it for a while.” “Did you just quote  _The Princess Bride?”_ “Shut up Pete.”) leaving Sirius and Remus to curl up on the threadbare sofa and enjoy the rare moment of peace.

“Remus?”  Sirius ventured, breaking the silence. Remus hummed in response, not looking up from his battered copy of  _Good Omens._

“What you told me the night you- the night of the accident… d’you still… d’you still feel that way?” Hearing Sirius stammer was a rare occurrence, and Remus didn’t trust himself to tear his eyes away from the senseless black marks on the yellowing paper before him.

“Does that really matter now?” For once, Remus was glad his heart was no longer beating, since keeping his voice steady and even was much easier when his throat wasn’t constricting and adrenaline wasn’t pumping through his veins (though somehow it still felt that way).

Then the book was gone from his hands and Sirius was far too close, expression hard and insistent.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I’ve spent four bloody years replaying that in my mind and cursing myself for standing there like an idiot letting you run away.” The very idea that they were having such a conversation was so ridiculous that Remus could find no other words than,

“I  _died,_ Sirius.”

Sirius raised an eyebrow.

“I had noticed that.”

“And I suppose you also noticed that I clawed my way out of the dirt and started eating people’s brains.”

“Yeah, so?”

“So I’m a monster, Sirius. It doesn’t matter what I feel: I’m just rotting organs and old skin and too many layers of cover up. I need medication every day lest I go rabid and murder everyone I love. No-one could ever- I’m not- I can’t-“

Remus wished Sirius would stop looking so horribly  _soft,_ like Remus was something fragile and precious. It was ruining his attempt to explain that it didn’t matter what he’d felt then (what he still felt) because everything was  _different_ and he was  _wrong_ and  _dangerous_ and Sirius absolutely shouldn’t be touching the side of his face like that and smiling and saying,

“Remus, will you  _stop talking._ ”

The kiss was nothing more than warm pressure. To his tired nerves, it felt like everything else: strangely far away. He was almost glad of it; if this was what it felt like dead, he wasn’t sure he could have handled the sensation when he was living.

He pressed forward to tangle his fingers in Sirius’s hair, and Sirius wrapped his arms around Remus’s waist, pulling him in so tightly that Remus gasped against his mouth.

“You’re you, okay?” Sirius breathed, his lips brushing Remus’s as he spoke: “You’re you and you’re back and that’s all that matters.”

**

He found her standing at her graveside, red hair whipping in the wind.

“All right, Evans?”

“Spectacular.” She rolled her eyes, and he noticed they were no longer green, but a sort of murky blue; it felt wrong, but the rest of her face was so wonderfully, painfully familiar that James found it hard not to stare.

“Okay, maybe that was a stupid question.”

“Don’t worry about it. The world’s sort of stupid at the moment.”

“I dunno,” James muttered, kicking at the ground as he ran a hand through his hair, “I mean, everything went to shit for a bit, granted, but at the end of it I got my friend back. And you. Not that you’re… y’know,  _mine,_ or anything, but I just… I like the world better with you in it.”

“The world doesn’t seem to agree. Rotters are dangerous, you know.”

“Don’t call yourself that.”

“Why shouldn’t I? Everyone else does.” The way she spat out the words spoke of something more than the common anger felt towards a tiny community who rarely bothered to whisper behind their hands.

“Anyone in particular I need to sort out?” he smirked. He said it to rile her; Lily had always hated his botched attempts at macho chivalry, but instead of the expected huff, she gave only a small sigh and said,

“No it’s… I should’ve expected, really-“

Then it clicked.

“It was Snivellus, wasn’t it? Slimy git, him and that HVF lot are all-“ Lily scoffed,

“You’re one to talk; you were in the HVF too. Just drop it, James, please.”

“Well  _yeah_  but as soon as the news got out about neuro-watsit we switched to capturing rather than killing right away!” James protested, “Malfoy and Snape and that lot just went right on without batting an eye-“

“All right, all right. Can we just stop talking about it?”

“Yeah… Yeah, right, sorry.” They lapsed into silence for a moment, both hunched over against the wind, before James spoke up. “ Y’know, I think I’ve still got one of our old French textbooks mouldering in the back of a cupboard somewhere; I could fish it out and you could whack me round the head with it if that’d make you feel better; just like old times, eh?” He nudged her arm with his elbow, and Lily smiled; even with the too-dark cover up and the wrong blue contact lenses, she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

“I… I’d like that.”

**

James was pacing in the living room. No comment had been offered when James and Peter had returned to find Remus curled up in Sirius’s lap, though the corner of James’s mouth had twitched into a smile as he nodded his greeting.

“I’ve got a bone to pick with you, Remus.”

“Oh?”

“You were roaming around untreated for what, two and a half years?”

“Give or take a few weeks.”

“Right. So in all that time, in over nine hundred days, a hundred and thirty weeks, thirty months of the burning desire to eat people’s brains: why is Snivellus still around?”

The atmosphere turned brittle for a moment, Peter glancing nervously from James to Remus as he wrung his hands in his lap. Remus looked up from his book, frowning,

“Really, James. Even as a rabid zombie, I like to think I’d have better taste.”


End file.
